Hellenistic Inter-state Political Ethics and the Emergence of the Jewish State

Doron Mendels is Max and Sophie Mydans Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

In Hellenistic Inter-state Political Ethics and the Emergence of the Jewish State, Doron Mendels offers ethicists, historians, and general readers an accessible analysis of inter-state codes that developed and went hand-in-hand with the increasing political dominance of the Roman Republic’s in eastern Mediterranean affairs during the years 200-168 BCE. These codes, though “virtual,” can be readily inferred from historiographic sources such as Livy, Roman Annalists, Polybius, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. By drawing attention to shared underpinnings from primary sources that account for how dominant, subjugated, allied and inimical political units could comprehend and interact, Mendels puts the rise of Jewish nationalism during the Maccabean Wars into a perspective that has all too often eluded historians and those who engage in socio-political ethics. In this book readers are treated to insights into flexible yet stable unwritten scripts that give rise to a world whose legacy remains with us today.

• Preface and Acknowledgements Part I: Mapping the Hellenistic Political Inter-state Ethical Code Introduction Chapter 1: Dialogue, War and the Public Declaration of Liberty (200-196 BCE) Chapter 2: Two Zones of Influence – One Ethical System Chapter 3: Hearings granted to Enemies through DialogueChapter 4: The Use and Abuse of an Inter-state Ethical System – Rome’s slide into Dominance Part II: Ethical Climate, Patterns of Behaviour and the Emerging Jewish StateIntroduction Chapter 5: The Hasmonean State as a Test Case for Patterns of Relationship between Empire and Subject State – The Book of 1 Maccabees Chapter 6: The Subject State Corresponds and Reacts to the Hellenistic Inter-state Ethical System – The Book of 2 Maccabees Bibliography